President Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge Books

The Provincial traces Calvin Coolidge's life from his thirteenth birthday until his graduation from Amherst College. It is a story of a shy young man from the country who gradually acquires an education and goes on to higher levels of learning, but in Coolidge's case that progress was very much against his will. He grew up in the remote farming hamlet of Plymouth Notch, Vermont, 11 miles from the nearest railroad; his stern, thrifty father made money selling insurance and maple sugar, holding local offices, and renting property. Coolidge looked forward to someday keeping the general store his father owned, only a hundred feet from his house, and passing his life in this isolated, close-knit community, among people he knew and liked. This book shows how his intelligence, his love of reading, and his father's ambitions for him pushed him unwillingly farther and farther away. (Booraem, Hendrick, Associated University Presses, 1994) - $39.50

The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge is the autobiography written by former United States President Calvin Coolidge. It was published in 1929, shortly after Coolidge left office. It is considered one of the finest presidential memoirs. Reprinted by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, 2006. (Coolidge, Calvin) - $22.00

Calvin Coolidge: Examining the Evidence is a record of a conference held at the John F. Kennedy Library on July 30 - 31,1998 containing excellent sources of further information about the President. It is among the first papers published in modern times to reevaluate Coolidge’s presidency. (Speakers’ papers published in the New England Journal of History. Fall 1998) - $15.00

Grace Coolidge And Her Era is a biography of Mrs. Calvin Coolidge. The author interviewed scores of people who had known or crossed paths with Mrs. Coolidge in her lifetime. John Coolidge, only surviving son of President and Mrs. Coolidge and his wife, Florence Trumbull Coolidge, cooperated both at their house in Farmington, Connecticut, and at their summer home in Plymouth, Vermont, where Calvin Coolidge was born. They provided letters and photographs, in addition to sharing with the author many personal recollections of Mrs. Coolidge.Still one of the best biographies about the First Lady (Ross, Ishbel. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,1962.) - $14.95

Calvin Coolidge never rated highly in polls, and history has remembered the decade in which he served as an extravagant period predating the Great Depression. Now Amity Shlaes provides a fresh look at the 1920s and our elusive thirtieth president. Coolidge reveals a triumphant period in which the nation electrified, Americans drove their first cars, and the federal deficit was replaced with a surplus—and the little-known man behind it. Though dismissed as quiet and passive, Coolidge proved unafraid to take on the divisive issues of this crucial period: reining in public-sector unions, unrelentingly curtailing spending, and rejecting funding for new interest groups. Perhaps more than any other president, he understood that doing less could yield more, reducing the federal budget even as the economy grew, wages rose, taxes fell, and unemployment dropped. (Barnes & Nobles overview - Shlaes, Amity. New York: Harper Collins, 2013) - $35.00

In the first full-scale biography of Calvin Coolidge in a generation, Robert Sobel shatters the caricature of our thirtieth president as a silent, do-nothing leader. Sobel delves into the record to show how Coolidge cut taxes four times, had a budget surplus every year in office, and cut the national debt by a third in a period of unprecedented economic growth. Though his list of accomplishments is impressive, Calvin Coolidge was perhaps best known and most respected by his contemporaries for his character. Americans in the 1920s embraced Coolidge for his upstanding character, which came as a breath of fresh air after the scandal-ridden administration of Warren G. Harding. Through research and analysis, Sobel reveals Coolidge's clear record of political successes and delivers the message that Coolidge had for our time - a message that speaks directly to our most important political debates. Coolidge's legacy is his deeds, not his words - which is exactly how he would have chosen to be remembered by history. (google books - Sobel, Robert, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998.)

Grace Coolidge: an Autobiography is based on articles written by Grace Coolidge for American Magazine and edited by Lawrence E. Wikander and Rober H. Ferrel. Grace Goodhue was the only child of Andrew Issachar Goodhue, a mechanical engineer, and Lemira Barrett Goodhue. After attending local schools, Grace enrolled at the University of Vermont, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1902. Influenced by a neighbour who worked with the hearing-impaired, she moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, and joined the Clarke Institute for the Deaf, where she learned a method of teaching the deaf to communicate with lipreading rather than sign language. In Northampton she met a young lawyer, Calvin Coolidge, who was serving on the city council. Married on October 4, 1905, they had two sons, John in 1906 and Calvin, Jr., in 1908. (Wikander, Lawrence E. and Robert H. Ferrell, editors, Worland, Wyoming: High Plains Publishing Co., 1992.)

Return To These Hills is the story of a boy who grew up in a tiny, remote Vermont hamlet. The boy, Calvin Coolidge, became the 30th U.S. President. His childhood was bounded by the mountains that isolated Plymouth Notch and by the stern precepts of his pioneer ancesters. Reprinted in 1998, this is an examination of Vermont’s influence on shaping Coolidge’s life and philosophy. (Curtis, Jane and Will and Frank Lieberman, Curtis-Lieberman Books) - $17.95